Supposedly, it is just a year-long break with his wife Rachel, a Google big-shot in California. But few believe he will return to Downing Street – rumour has it that he wants to try out his big ideas directly by running a city as mayor. Given that he got nicked in 2008 for losing his rag with a train ticket inspector in Birmingham, we can cross Brum off the likely list.

DEPUTY PM and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is taking no chances with the former Energy Minister Chris Huhne, who quit the Government for the backbenches last month so that he could fight charges of perverting the course of justice. Clegg’s one-time leadership rival is being closely watched for signs of trouble – a task made easier now he has swapped his suite on the “Upper Ministerial Corridor” to share a downgraded office with his party whip Mark Hunter. How the mighty fall. Mind you, he could yet share a smaller cell if his trial goes badly in October.

IN Huhne’s bid to avoid precisely that outcome, the millionaire ex-minister has hired the top lawyer who got Harry Redknapp off his tax evasion charges, despite the Spurs manager having an overseas bank account in his dog’s name. Unfortunately for Huhne, he doesn’t have a dog to blame.

PRETTY boy shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham is famous for two things – his long eyelashes and his ability to make ridiculously daft claims. Fighting NHS reforms, he told the BBC that “Drop the Bill” was the best piece of advice an opposition had ever given a Prime Minister. Really, Andy? Better advice than Winston Churchill’s campaign against Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s?

TONY Blair is back, quietly meeting Labour MPs and privately advising Ed Miliband. While the union-controlled Labour Party conference booed Tony Blair’s name last year, the ambitious young guns of Labour Students, traditionally a breeding ground for MPs, are nostalgic for the three-times election winner. At their conference last weekend a boozy evening ended with chants of “Tony, Tony, Tony!” followed by a spontaneous karaoke rendition of Labour’s 1997 election theme song Things Can Only Get Better. Perhaps, alas, not so likely for them under Ed Miliband.

TORY toff Jacob Rees-Mogg MP is a curious eccentric. The impeccably-dressed dandy not only managed to get the second-longest word in the English language into a speech in Parliament during the week - “floccinaucinihilipilification”, by the way - he’s also recently been campaigning for Somerset to have a different time zone. Fellow Tory MP Harriett Baldwin overheard him requesting written records of the House of Commons from 1878 on Thursday. It seems that it’s not just the clocks he wants to put back.

LABOUR MP Eric Joyce was last week charged with three assaults after a bar fight and is now facing new press allegations that he had an affair with a teenage girl. Labour bosses, despite suspending him from the party, still seem keen to do everything possible to avoid a by-election in his Falkirk seat. Nothing to do with their polling indicating Alex Salmond’s Scottish Nationalists would easily win, despite the big majority Labour had at the last election.

SALMOND was accused during the week of “getting into bed with Rupert Murdoch” after the media tycoon expressed his support for Scottish independence on Twitter following a meeting with the First Minister. Given that Salmond’s very close confidante is Joan McAlpine, a former editor of one of Murdoch’s papers turned Member of the Scottish Parliament, their relationship could be deeper than it looks.